TS 1268 




sJO:^E[7li 

i::^ixon 

ONE OF THE 
VX/ORLL'M71KER? 

BY 

ELBERT- HVKBHRti 



^ 



THE ROY^ROFTER? 

EFI5T- HI/RORRERIE^Ol/rflY- n.Y 






Copyright 1912 

by 
Elbert Hubbard 



'■CU3()5G2B 



/?-/2^HGS 




JOSEPH DIXON 

One of the World-Makers 

SHORT time ago Mr. Andrew 
,|Camegie supplied us a list of 
twenty men who have practi- 
cally made the civilized world 
what it is today. 
The publication of this list 
created a good deal more than 
a ripple on the literary sea. 
Among others, I was invited to supply a list of 
twenty men who had influenced the world most, 
and here is the list of the great men who, in my 
mind, are best entitled to the title of world-makers : 

1. Pericles, who took the treasure of Delos — a 
fund raised for war purposes — and used it to build 
the most beautiful city the world has ever seen. 
The influence of Pericles — in architecture, sculp- 
ture, oratory, literature, the drama, physical culture 
— still endures and animates and inspires every 
worker in the arts. 

2. Aristotle, the world's first scientist, to whom 
very much of our scientific terminology now traces. 
Aristotle organized the first herbarium, the first 
geological collection, the first zoological garden. 
He taught the world that health, sanity and 



JOSEPH DIXON 



happiness are to be obtained only through an 
understanding of and compliance with the laws 
of Nature, and a love of Nature. 

3. Michelangelo, a workingman who sanctified 
manual labor; the first of modern architects; a 
poet, a painter, a sculptor, an engineer, a worker in 
the metals. Millions upon millions of sim,ple people 
today look upon his work and are uplifted by it. 

4. Columbus, who gave the world a continent, 
even though he died in chains. 

5. Benjamin Franklin, discoverer, inventor, busi- 
nessman, financier, diplomat, philanthropist, phi- 
losopher. 

6. Gutenberg, inventor of the art of printing from 
movable types. 

7. Watt, the practical inventor of the steam- 
engine £9^ &^ 

8. Arkwright, inventor of spinning and weaving 
machinery s^ &«^ 

9. Stephenson, inventor of the locomotive. 

10. Adam Smith, author of " The Wealth of 
Nations," the first book that treats economics 
as a science, and the first man who claimed that 
civilization is the result of our activities and not 
a product of abstract thinking. 



WORLD MAKER 



11. Thomas Jefferson, the only Democrat the 
world has ever seen ; who taught the principles 
of a Republican form of government, and founded 
our public-school system ; a man singularly patient, 
creative, loving, generous, gentle, and with whom 
the world has not yet caught up. 

12. Charles Darwin, discoverer and teacher of 
evolution &^ 5<^ 

13. Joseph Dixon, scientist, inventor, chemist, 
machinist, sociologist, humanitarian, 

14. Lincoln, emancipator and statesman. 

15. Edison, applier of electricity and commonsense. 

16. Hargreaves, inventor of the spinning-jenny. 

17. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the 
telephone so» s^ 

18. Perry G. Hold en, who through the selection 
of seed-corn has shown the world how to double 
its productive wealth per acre. 

19. George Westinghouse, inventor of more than 
fifteen hundred mechanical and electrical appli- 
ances, most important of which, perhaps, is the 
railroad air-brake. 

20. Friedrich Froebel, through whose teachings 
corporal punishment has been abandoned, and 
who gave the world a new system of education. 



JOSEPH DIXON 



All of our progress along the line of pedagogy 
has been through the application of the Froebel 
method introduced in the higher grades, and 
whether Froebel knew it or not, he was heir to 
the ideas of Aristotle, who lived three hundred 
fifty years before Christ. 



,^|»'HIS list of the world's great men has been 
\ll/ widely printed and extensively commented 
upon s^ s^ 

It has received the commendation and endorse- 
ment of many of the biggest and best thinkers in 
America today. 

Quite a number of high schools and colleges have 
taken this list as a basis for study as to the influ- 
ences that have most benefited and uplifted the 
world 5«» £<^ 

Some of the men in this list I have written about 
at length. The others I intend to write on. 
But just now I want to say a few things about 
Joseph Dixon, a man whose work has profoundly 
influenced civilization, yet strangely enough, a 
man of whom the world at large knows little. 
In fact, if you have the good fortune to have a 
little silver jingling in your pocket, not to mention 



WORLD MAKER 



gold, the coinsj have been[ ^minted through appli- 
ances invented by Joseph Dixon. 
You reach for a lead-pencil and you make use of 
another of Dixon's inventions, for let it be known 
that the lead-pencil is a little like the guinea-pig, 
for the guinea-pig is n't a pig and it is n't from 
Guinea. The modem lead-pencil is n't made from 
lead or from anything that even contains a chem- 
ical trace of lead. 

There is no article in such universal use as the 
lead-pencil. James J. Hill had his photograph 
taken the other day in New York, and in his hand 
he holds a Dixon pencil, the brand plainly visible. 
And here I am, writing this article with a Dixon 
lead-pencil, and have half a dozen more Dixon 
lead-pencils in my pockets, or strewed over the 
table 5«p 5^ 

Everybody steals lead-pencils without any qualm 
of conscience, just as we " lift " umbrellas when 
they happen to be handy. 

In dining-cars, a worthy colored man tells me, 
four out of five of the male patrons pocket the 
railroad lead-pencil after making out their order, 
d Joseph Dixon was the first manufacturer of 
lead-pencils in the United States ; in fact, much 



8 JOSEPH DIXON 

of the machinery used in pencil-making today is 
of his invention, although it was not until 
Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two that the Dixon 
Company put its first lead-pencils on the market 
under the Dixon name, the first gross of pencils 
being sold to a dealer in Morristown, New Jersey. 
The Dixon Crucible Company is now one of the 
largest manufacturers of lead-pencils in the world. 



^Jff^HE consumption of lead-pencils in America 
\ly is about two hundred million a year ; that is 
to say, we use two lead-pencils to a person. 
The test of civilization is the consumption of 
lead-pencils &^ &» 

In certain States in the Union the consumption 
of lead-pencils is only about half a pencil to a per- 
son. In other States, there are three or four pencils 
used a year per person, and in one State there are 
six pencils used to a person. It would be unfair 
and perhaps indelicate, and arouse needless sec- 
tional antagonisms, to mention the States that used 
most or least in the way of lead-pencils. 
The pad-and-pencil habit is a wonderful one, 
and any one who has it will become a distinguished 
individual. The idea is simply this : When the 



WORLD MAKER 



thought flashes through your electric sky-piece, 
seize upon it and get it down in black and white 
on the pad. This is the great Dixon Idea, put forth 
by Joseph Dixon, but upon which there is no 
caveat, copyright or patent. Dixon was an average 
man who evolved into a genius through the habit 
of making the best use of his energies. Life to him 
was a precious privilege. He prized his time and 
valued his thoughts. 

It has well been said that one can not enter a shop, 
a store, a bank or a factory without seeing things 
that had their origin in the fertile brain of Thomas 
A. Edison. In fact, you can not look out of a win- 
dow in any city of Christendom but that you see 
things bearing the mark of Edison. 
It is almost equally true of the work of Joseph 
Dixon, although, of course, his work was less 
spectacular than that of Edison ; but Edison in 
degree built upon the work of Dixon and made 
use of many of Dixon's appliances and ideas, all 
of which Edison freely acknowledges. Edison is 
so rich in ideas that he has always been willing to 
give due credit to others. We build upon the past, 
and all the days that have gone before have made 
this day, this time, this place possible. 



10 JOSEPH DIXON 

In the laboratory of Thomas A. Edison at Orange, 
New Jersey, are to be seen the retorts and crucibles 
invented by Joseph Dixon. 

Civilization is a matter of collaboration, and when 
we sit down to dinner we make use of the net re- 
sults of the work of ten thousand men and women. 



fOSEPH DIXON was bom at Marblehead, 
Massachusetts, in the last year of the last 
century. He died in Jersey City in Eighteen 
Hundred Sixty-nine. 

He possessed from boyhood all of the restless, 
noble discontent that has made the Yankee Nation 
supreme in the world of invention. His was the 
restless mechanical brain. Nothing was ever good 
enough. It must be made better. He looked upon 
raw materials, and in the vividness of his imagi- 
nation saw a completed product. 
His first invention was a machine for cutting files. 
Before Dixon's day files were made by hand &^ 
He became a printer, and not having the money 
to buy metal type, he set to work engraving on 
wood and made his type of wood. Incidentally, 
he became a skilled wood-carver. 
Later, he invented a matrix for casting type, and 



WORLDMAKER 11 

the melting of materials for the making of type 
led straight to the manufacture of a crucible that 
would withstand heat, and not fuse with the metal 
that was being melted. 

By the time Joseph Dixon was twenty-one, he 
was regarded in New England as an expert chemist. 
He studied medicine with intent to become a 
practising physician, but, seemingly, he lost faith 
in drugs, and this at a time when all the world 
believed in the efficacy and excellence of poisons 
as remedies. 

Joseph Dixon said, " If you are immersed in your 
work and do not overeat and underbreathe, you 
will never get sick." An amazing proposition in 
its simplicity, when we think that the statement 
was uttered in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two ! 
i[ He took up the business of an optician and 
made lenses, grinding the lenses with aid of graph- 
ite, a plan that is still continued. 
He experimented on the work of Daguerre, and 
was the first man to produce a portrait by means 
of a camera. He showed Professor Morse how to 
take portraits with the aid of a reflector, and this 
use of the reflector was utilized later in telegraphy, 
and especially in the use of the electric cable *•• 



12 JOSEPHDIXON 

He was the first man to build a locomotive with 
a double crank, and I believe he was the man 
who showed Fulton how to arrange his steam- 
engines so they would not get stuck on the center. 
C He perfected the process of lithography. From 
printing with movable type he began to print on 
a fiat stone surface ; and from printing with the 
use of lithograph-stones, he began to print by the 
solar process, which, of course, is the basic idea in 
photography so* in^ 

At this time bank-notes were easily counterfeited. 
Joseph Dixon invented a scheme of printing bank- 
notes in colors, and had the process patented so. 
It seems, however, that other printers took up 
the idea, and Dixon allowed them to use the process 
without paying royalty, and thus the idea drifted 
into common use, and became, as it were, current 
coin of the realm. 

The printing of money led to the coinage of metals, 
and Dixon invented a crucible made from graphite 
for the melting of gold and silver. Later, this 
crucible was adapted even to melting steel and 
materials that formerly had defied the metal- 
worker. Joseph Dixon was the first man to use 
collodion for photographer's use s^ s^ 



WORLD MAKER 13 

And the wonderful system of grinding lenses, per- 
fected in America by that great and good man, 
Mr. John Brashear, who has done better work in 
his own particular line than any other living man, 
traces a direct pedigree to the fertile brain of 
Joseph Dixon. 



VjTHERE is considerable controversy as to who 
^^ it was invented the process of making Babbitt 
metal, but certain it is that Babbitt got the initial 
impulse from Joseph Dixon. 

Babbitt metal is simply a metal that obviates 
friction. It is used in the bearings of journals, 
cranks, axles, etc., and this idea came to Dixon 
in his work of perfecting the crucible. 
Lead-pencils, before this, were made of compo- 
sitions of lead, first being made from straight lead 
bars si^ &^ 

Joseph Dixon was one of the first to discard lead 
entirely and use graphite instead. This followed, 
very naturally, from the fact that in using graphite 
Dixon got his hands and face thoroughly well 
blacked 5«^ s^ 

To utilize the black, then, was the next thing, 
for Dixon — true Yankee that he was — made money 



14 



JOSEPH DIXON 



out of his faults, his blunders and his failures, and 
everything that he did he was able to turn into 
power with the aid of his enthusiasm, his imagi- 
nation and his wonderful inventive faculties. It 
is a great man who can cash in his mistakes. If 
Dixon did not always find the thing he was working 
for, he usually got something just as good. 
He started the business, in Salem, Massachusetts, 
in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven, and con- 
tinued it in the same plant until Eighteen Hundred 
Forty- seven 5<> 5o» 

At that time there was very little demand for 
lead-pencils. It was not a writing age. People 
were too busy cutting down the forests, getting 
a living, building houses and doing the necessary 
work of pioneer times. 

Dixon made his lead-pencils and then went out 
peddling them among the people. It was a peddling 
age, and manufacturers would make up a quantity 
of their products in their homes and then go out 
and sell them. 

New England was a country of peddlers, and these 
peddlers educated the people — and themselves. 
You can't hibernate and get an education. Wher- 
ever they went these Yankees distributed all the 



WORLD MAKER 15 

knowledge they possessed, and a few things besides. 
They picked up wisdom and passed it along. 
Emerson, in his essays, speaks of the " wonderful 
things sent us from Connecticut." Emerson had a 
hired man by the name of Henry Thoreau, who 
made lead-pencils. Henry Thoreau 's father learned 
the business in the shop of Joseph Dixon over at 
Salem, where witches once held high jinks. 
At Salem lived a man by the name of George 
Peabody, who was a friend of Dixon's. Peabody 
clerked in a country store and afterwards became 
a peddler, and among the wares that Peabody sold 
were stove-polish and lead-pencils, made by Joseph 
Dixon 5^ &^ 

Henry Thoreau did not have quite enough business 
ability, being inclined more toward using pencils 
than selling them. So his lead-pencil business 
languished, and the spiders and mice accepted 
the receivership. 

Peabody went down to Georgetown, in the District 
of Columbia, founded a big business in the Yankee 
notion line, drifted off into drygoods, became a 
banker, went over to London and did things in 
the line of philanthropy so big that they astounded 
and astonished the world. 



15 JOSEPHDIXON 

Peabody is the world's first philanthropist; his 
name is deathless, on account of his having intro- 
duced altruism into business, being the first man, 
practically, who regarded business as public service, 
and wealth as a trusteeship. 



^ITHE center of the lead-pencil business seemed 
^^ to drift from New England to New York, 
because in New York there were wholesale dealers 
who took the entire product of manufacturers 
and distributed it for them, saving the manufac- 
turer the trouble of going from house to house to 
sell his product. 

Stoves are practically a very modem invention. 
Seventy-five years ago, most everything was 
cooked in fireplaces, in metal pots. 
When the stoves came in and rust began to disfigure 
the tidy housewife's necessary possession, stove- 
blacking seemed a very desirable thing. 
Dixon used his graphite idea and made the first 
stove-polish 5«» s^ 

The idea came to him, of course, through the 
discovery of what a wonderful polish he put on 
his hands in working in the graphite, making 
crucibles &^ «i^ 



WORLD MAKER 17 

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven, Dixon moved 
to Jersey City, which was a suburb of New York. 
He bought land out on the prairie for fifty dollars 
an acre, and started his business of making cruci- 
bles, stove-polish and lead-pencils si^ But the 
principal business was the supplying of crucibles 
to men who were melting metals. One of the best 
customers for the Dixon crucible was our Uncle 
Samuel, and these crucibles were bought for use 
in minting gold and silver. Later, Uncle Sam 
ordered Dixon lead-pencils, a hundred gross at a 
time. The United States Government has always 
been one of the best Dixon customers. 
In the year Eighteen Hundred Sixty-seven, Dixon, 
feeling that the business was going to grow as 
the years progressed, and as the demand for graph- 
ite articles increased, and realizing that his own 
strength was failing, formed, under a Special Act of 
Congress, a corporation known as the Joseph Dixon 
Crucible Company. At that time the making of 
crucibles was a practical monopoly — no one knew 
how to do the trick as well as Dixon. 
This business continues now, constantly growing, 
constantly enlarging with the spirit of the times. 
It is the biggest institution of its kind in the world. 



18 JOSEPHDIXON 

^frUK success of Joseph Dixon in a business way 
\u/ was based on the use of graphite. Graphite is 
known as plumbago or black-lead. It is commonly 
called a mineral. It is widely diffused, being found 
almost everywhere in the wide world, but only 
in a few places in sufficient quantities so it can be 
mined to advantage. 

Graphite is a crystal, formed, it is believed, from 
the remains of the plants known as the Plum- 
baginacese, mixed in a certain degree with animal 
remains s^ &e» 

It has the qualities somewhat of mineral oil, and 
also partakes of the elements of anthracite-coal. 
It is anthracite with a college education. 
The same substance of which Nature makes 
asbestos is distributed, in degree, through graphite. 
CL It is found in very thin layers between the strata 
of rocks. A graphite deposit six inches through 
is deemed well worth working. 
A large amount of the graphite used in America 
comes from Ceylon. However, the Dixon Company 
own deposits at Ticonderoga, New York, and the 
Ticonderoga graphite is used extensively by them. 
There are also deposits of it in New Hampshire. 
C Joseph Dixon's first introduction to graphite 



WORLD MAKER 19 

was through an old farmer in New Hampshire 
bringing him samples of the mineral and wanting 
him to interest himself in working the mine, which 
was supposed to be on the old farmer's property. 
Unhappily, the vein of graphite discovered by the 
New Hampshire man produced only a few hundred 
pounds. But this was enough to fire the zeal and 
curiosity of Joseph Dixon, and to start him in 
his line of experiments. 

He then arranged with sea-captains that were 
sailing between the Port of Boston and East India 
to bring back from Ceylon quantities of graphite 
for his use. 

This was the first importation of graphite in 
America s^ &^ 



T[jpM the death of Mr. Dixon in Eighteen 
^Hundred Sixty-nine, the practical manage- 
ment of the business drifted to Mr. John A. Walker, 
who went into the works as errand-boy and janitor, 
and arose step by step, for power always gravitates 
to the man who can shoulder it. 
Walker was the moving spirit in the Dixon enter- 
prise until the day of his death, in Nineteen 
Hundred Seven. He served the Dixon Company 



20 J O S E P H DIXON 

for more than forty years. He was a man of marked 
personality, heir, through love and devotion, to a 
good deal of the genius of the dead chief. 
In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine the Dixon 
Company was practically reorganized s^ Mr. 
E. F. C. Young was made President of the con- 
cern ; Mr. John A. Walker was made Vice-Presi- 
dent, Treasurer and General Manager ; and George 
E. Long, Secretary. 

John A. Walker ended his work in this world in 
Nineteen Hundred Seven, and President Young 
passed away in Nineteen Hundred Eight, and 
was succeeded by his son-in-law, Mr. George 
T. Smith, who had had an experience of thirty-five 
years with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company 
and who was Vice-President of the First National 
Bank of Jersey City, of which Mr. Young was 
President. Mr. Wm. H. Corbin, a well-known 
lawyer of Jersey City, was made Vice-President 
and General Counsel ; Mr. George E. Long, 
Treasurer; Mr. Harry Dailey, Secretary; and 
Mr. J. H. Schermerhorn, Assistant Treasurer and 
Secretary &i^ 5«^ 

In all the history of this great concern, it was 
never so prosperous as it is now. Free competition 



WORLD MAKER 21 



has made the Dixon Crucible Company supreme 
in the manufacture and distribution of graphite 
products 5«^ S9» 

In the way of graphite lubricants, twenty-seven 
different forms are supplied. Graphite, for the use 
of electrical workers and manufacturers of electri- 
cal supplies, has become a very important depart- 
ment of the business. 

Graphite is used in electrotyping and for polishing 
and dyeing, and for paint and metal structure 
work ; and the demand for crucibles still continues 
as never before. 

Chemists are a superstitious lot, and after they 
get a thing that serves their purpose they are 
not to be diverted by the offer of something else 
" just as good." 

In melting gold and silver, men can not afford 
to take chances on an imperfect implement. 
Dixon crucibles mean the standard of excellence, 
and anything upon which the name of Dixon is 
placed is a guarantee of its purity, strength and 
its effectiveness. 



22 JOSEPH DIXON 

^tK HE intricate machinery used in the manu- 
^^ facture of crucibles, stove-poHsh, and other 
graphite products sprang almost entirely from 
the restless brain of Joseph Dixon. Most of these 
inventions are unpatented, and they are made in 
the Dixon machine-shops for the exclusive use 
of the Dixon Crucible Company. If any one else 
can make a machine ** just as good," he is welcome 
to go ahead, and the strange part is that he never 
does it 5^ 5«^ 

The Dixon Company are also very largely indebted 
to their own mechanics for many of the improve- 
ments that have been made in their intricate 
machinery. These men are ever on the watch to 
improve and simplify the wonderful labor-saving 
machinery. They are satisfied, and satisfied men 
are always endeavoring to help their employers. 
They are appreciated, and encouraged. 
The Dixon Company are the largest consumers 
of graphite in the world. They are also the largest 
consumers of cedar. Anywhere in the world where 
cedar-trees are grown lush and lusty, the Dixon 
folks will buy the property if it is for sale. The 
Dixon folks own between seventy and eighty 
thousand acres of cedar-forests in Florida. 



WORLD MAKER 



23 



They have cedar-trees enough in sight to answer 
their requirements for a hundred years to come. 
€[ Forestry forms a big interest with the Dixons. 
The subject of raising cedar- trees has been con- 
sidered by them from every possible standpoint, 
and the men they hire to look after their trees 
are experts in their especial line. 
On account of the great use of the especially 
constructed machinery, the Dixons do not employ 
as many helpers as one might suppose. Between 
fifteen hundred and two thousand people do their 
work £«» &^ 

One of the needs for which a machine has never 
been invented is the picking up of twelve lead- 
pencils out of a mass at one motion. In the Dixon 
works the visitors are surprised and pleased to 
see scores of bright, healthy, active girls, who 
reach a hand into a box without looking, and pick 
out twelve pencils with one grab, ninety-nine 
times out of a hundred. 

This degree of efficiency shows how we not only 
think with our heads, but with our hands. Most 
of us are uneducated in a digital way. Joseph 
Dixon himself used to boast that he could do this 
thing, and he it was who taught the girls how to 



24 JOSEPH DIXON 

think with their fingers. Outside of Joseph Dixon, 
this exquisite digital skill seems to be a feminine 
attribute, for no man around the Dixon works 
can approach the women in efficiency. 
Naturally, the Dixons are very proud of their 
helpers, some of whom have been with them 
upwards of fifty years, and are still at it. 
The Dixon business stands as a great solid entity, 
ably organized, meeting the needs of millions of 
people s€^ &i^ 

As the commercial interests of America grow more 
and more, so will Dixon products be in demand. 
The immense strides of the Dixon Crucible Com- 
pany within the past few years give only a guess 
as to what the work will eventually develop into. 
CI Surely Joseph Dixon, with all his vividness of 
imagination, never anticipated the extent to which 
this business that he founded has grown. 
So far does a little candle throw its beams! «» 



so HERE THEN ENDETH THE PREACHMENT. " JOSEPH 
DIXON, ONE OF THE WORLD-MAKERS," AS SET DOWN 
BY ELBERT HUBBARD, AND PRINTED BY THE 
ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST 
AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK. JANUARY, MCMXII 



lEB 7 1912 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



•^ t<^ \j[^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



018 456 471 3 % 



MODERN BUSINESS 
IS FOUNDED ON 
HUMAN SERVICE 



